HELPING YOU CUT THROUGH THE BULLSHIT.

A Defense Of Netflix’s DEATH NOTE

Oh, you haven’t seen the anime? Haven’t read the manga? No worries, it’s still bad, even without comparing it to the classic and beloved source material!

The acting is bad, the plot holes are enormous, the casting choices are… dubious at best.

So, everything you heard about the Netflix Death Note movie is true: The movie sucks.

But, now for the “defense” part:

What made Death Note enjoyable to me is the fact that it’s so obviously bad. I couldn’t look away. There’s something magical in witnessing such a complete trainwreck (when you know there’s no life or death stakes involved, of course).

The death scenes look like a worse version of Final Destination, for God’s sake. The Deus Ex Machina elements are so blatant, so…

The ending is something else entirely.

That narration, describing what was done, the images, everything just so neatly tied (never mind the giant plot hole of writing all of that down, in so little time, with such detail)… I won’t give it all away, but that ending (specially the extreme ending, with Ryuk “musing” about human nature)… I’d still write a longer piece on that ending alone.

BUT…

There is something that I look for in entertainment: A complete displacement from reality.

People that know me online probably think I’m the “Meme Guy”, a person who only shares the most absurd, surreal memes, close to 24/7. But memes give me what I need in terms of art: to be completely distracted from real life. To feel something shift in the fabric of reality. It’s the same feeling I got when I first read Bizarro Fiction (and that I still feel to this day when I read a great Bizarro Book).

That’s why I’ll defend this movie as a (unintentional) surreal adaptation, and that’s why I’ll say: Just give this a try, with an open mind. Who knows, maybe you’ll take something positive out of the experience, just like I did.